When it had got dark tonight, I went out to look at the pond about 9.45pm to see what was happening. I could see a teneral Blue tailed Damselfly at rest on one of the sticks which must have emerged today. Shining a torch into the pond revealed a couple of Emperor Dragonfly nymphs sitting quite high up on the reeds just below the surface. It won't be long until they emerge and as mentioned before, its probably the one set of shots I would love to photograph, the ultimate dragonfly emerging under darkness. With this in mind I thought I had better have a practice to see what settings to use and how the shots would come out. I used the monopod to rest the camera on and used the light on my phone which I angled at the resting Blue tailed Damselfly. I took a selection of shots using manual focus, ISO 400, speed set to 250 and ranged from f11-f22. I used the in camera flash and the results were not too bad. I think I will use the tripod next time as this will give me more freedom to sort out the lighting and sort the focus out etc. I just hope that the Emperor nymph uses one of my pre planted reed stems to come out on so I can get a good angle on the emergence. A good learning curve with a little more knowledge gained tonight, a few more nights practice should see me getting it nearly right............ before the big event happens!
Teneral Blue tailed Damselfly
These worked very well. A diffuser may make them even better.
ReplyDeleteThese look pretty darn good already! Once you have it all worked out, I would love to see a succession of photos representing your learning curve. It would be a chapter in your book ...
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